


By the light of that same star

by miabicicletta



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5 + 1, F/M, holiday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5519597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Christmases, and one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By the light of that same star

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, lovely friends :)

_one_

Thing is, it’s kind of a rite of passage, Mike is awkwardly explaining. Everyone works the holidays their first year. 

“Of course,” says Molly Hooper, overly bright. “I don’t mind.” Her cheer does falter, but she covers the disappointment with a weak smile. 

She calls her dad before the afternoon is out, breaks the news. She won’t be able to make it up for Christmas Day this year. By the time she finishes making her apologies and talking herself through the guilt, she’s returned to the third floor lab and _he’s_ looked up from his microscope for the first time in hours. It’s been five months since she met Sherlock Holmes and he’s not once addressed her other than to bark orders or make demands. His steady aquamarine gaze is waiting for her as she slips through the door. 

“You lied,” he says, point blank. “You do mind. You have somewhere to be.” 

“It’s fine,” Molly says, pocketing her phone. “So,” she says, facing him. “What did you need?” 

It is the first time she lies to Mike Stamford. 

(It is not the last.)

 _two_

It is the first holiday he is clean since he was a teenager, and it isn't as bad as he had expected. It is, in fact, far worse. (Admittedly, everything is worse when he's not high all the time.) He ignores the phone calls and invites, and invades the path lab with a list of samples he requires from the remains of Sukesh Salim.

The girl frowns. He reaches to the Barts room of his mind palace, searches for her name. Maura. Mindy. No—Molly. 

“Problem, _Molly_?” he says. The girl swallows. 

“I was about to leave,” she protests. 

“Why? You’ve nowhere to be.” 

Her mouth twists in aggravation. Eyes narrow. 

“Am I wrong?” he challenges, daring her to stomp off. His head aches. It would be much better if it were _quiet_. 

“No.” The way she says it makes him look up. Her shoulders slump. She touches her sleeve to her eye, briefly, and it isn’t until she turns to rip the list from his hands that he sees a tear shining beside anger. 

“That doesn’t make you right,” says Molly Hooper, who quietly helps him solve a murder.

He never seems to forget her name again. 

_three_

By dawn on Boxing Day, the lovely dress has found its way into a charity bin outside Farringdon Tube. Looks better there, too. 

Bone weary and spent, Molly Hooper goes home, feeds her cat. She is drained of her hope, and her holiday spirit. She wants nothing more to close her eyes and not open them again until the new year. Maybe that will be enough. Maybe by then she will feel different. 

When she falls asleep, she dreams of snow falling on corpses and finds it peaceful. 

_four_

He’s is halfway through the Old City when he hears music.

In thirty-six hours he is due to meet a contact in the West Bank with intel on a Belgian arms dealer (almost certainly a member of Moriarty’s web) trading on a British passport in the Golan Heights. But the music, as unexpected and familiar as an old friend’s voice, falling through a stone door makes him stop in his tracks. He turns. When he catches sight of a faded English-language sign, Sherlock Holmes realizes three things all at once: That he is looking at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, that it is Christmas Eve, and that he misses home. 

Throngs of people crowd the after-dark Jerusalem streets. He is surrounded by keffiyehs and yarmulkes and crosses, by music and conversation, and the occupied territories are a hard place to be on the best of days. So he slips into a seat below a broken heat lamp outside an empty cafe. He listens for a few spare moments, sipping tea. Thinking of his friends. Where they are. What they are doing. John is with his sister, maybe. Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson. His brother and parents. They will all have plans. The only person he imagines may well be alone is Molly. Working, as usual. 

Instead he imagines Molly Hooper by the soft blinking lights of a brightly decorated tree, looking out her window, her dreams like messages in a bottle, cast out, hoping to be found. 

When he returns from his travels, long after the cafe on the the Via Dolorosa, there is a sparkling ring upon her finger, and he knows he was wrong about Molly Hooper. 

Always, always. 

_five_

She stands in front of the bench where he is sitting, handcuffs on his wrists, uncertainty in his eyes. She waits for him to explain. 

“They told you?”

“Mycroft,” she answers. Her voice is thick with difficult silence, thicker still with difficult words. 

“Molly Hooper.” 

"Sherlock Holmes.” 

“You were the first. My first friend. Years ago.” 

She kneels before him, blinking back tears that fracture her vision into prisms of light and shadow. 

“You were my friend, and I returned your kindness with nothing but scorn. Why are you here? Still? Tell me, Molly. I cannot begin to understand the depth of your kindness.” 

She folds her hands atop his. “You know why.” 

“I truly don’t.” 

“Because I love you.” She says it plain. Without adornment, or emotion. As clearly as if she were describing the atomic weight of cadmium, the viscosity of blood, the rate of cellular decay after death. 

She gives him the only truth he had not yet discovered for himself, and takes no pleasure in doing so. 

_and one (if the fates allow)_

Music filters into the bedroom. Fairy lights twinkle around the eaves. A sprig of mistletoe hangs above the crib. Molly leans her head in hand, stroking the smallest fingers, attached to the teensiest hands of the tiniest person she has ever loved. Her son blinks his blue eyes sleepily, snuffling against his bedding, drifting into dreams. 

The carols come to a close. In the apartment below, she hears Mary and John gather up Emmy and bid goodnight. His footfalls sound a moment later. 

Sherlock glances at his son, pleased to see him sleeping, and makes a note of the time in the app he’s built. Her heart swells at the strange forms his dedication takes. Numbers as much as action, data as much as adoration. 

“Gotta present for you,” she says softly. 

“What could I possibly need that you haven’t already given me, Molly Hooper?” 

She tilts her head back on his shoulder. “Romantic,” she accuses. 

“Never,” he swears, but holds her closer all the same. 


End file.
